Gethsemane
by Palladius
Summary: It wasn't Cerberus that recovered Commander Shepard's body. It wasn't the Collectors, Liara or the Shadow Broker. It was an unlikely alliance of two individuals, each of them having searched for a long time. An alliance that was almost destroyed before it could finish its work. A Mass Effect 2 AU.
1. Chapter 1

Searching I

The colony of Freedom's Progress didn't quite feel right. There was a tension in the air, something only he could taste.

-Something is not right here-

The answering thought came back, swelling with the strength of the thinker.

-Be on your guard-

-As always-

He looked around, surveying the area from his position on the rooftop. He was trusting the Riser. She hadn't been wrong so far. He could almost smell the pallor of impending doom. Too bad the Humans scurrying around below him couldn't sense it too. They would get the hell out of Dodge. But the Riser had insisted he not reveal himself. Any form of warning could compromise their existence. And they needed the data.

There was a commotion on the other side of the colony, his senses already zeroing in on the disturbance and recording the data.

-They are here-

-Remain on Overwatch until extraction team arrives-

-As you command-

Screaming, then bugs flew down in swarms, their stings biting, freezing people as they fled. An enormous ship, easily the equal of the Riser's command ship, came down over the colony. He looked up into the drive port of the behemoth and couldn't help but feel a primal stirring of fear. That thing could obliterate the entire colony without so much as a by your leave. Which would be unfortunate for him. As the swarms took over the colony, he sat and watched.

He set himself to passive as he drew in data, knowing that if he was active he would face the difficult choice of forcing himself to stay hidden. Compassion was a natural impulse for him and his kind. The Riser's kind. He thought back to his so far brief life. A little under a month in the Riser's service, and before that nothing. She had given him everything, given him life and purpose. And although she hated it, those who insisted on calling her Mother weren't far off the mark. She fitted the description remarkably well.

He was woken from his reverie by the sound of gunshots. Looks like the colony's mechs were attacking a group of brightly coloured aliens. He took a moment to check his processes. Quarians. He thought he recognised their species. It was almost funny watching them try to fight. There was one that seemed partially competent, that was it. The others, he thought little of. As they moved into the buildings another ship came down, a sleek black shard so unlike the blocky transport the Quarians had arrived in. Six units stepped out, each one similar to him and yet so different. The largest one was a good eight feet tall and armed with an enormous projectile cannon slung across its back as well as twin machine guns integrated into its forearms. By comparison the smallest, an Infiltrator like him, was only five foot six and armed with two semi-automatic rifles in the forearms, with infrared lasers for targeting assistance. They headed out, four of them in a two by two advance pattern, the Soldier hanging back to cover them with his projectile cannon and the Infiltrator ranging ahead, calling out targets for the team. The security mechs didn't stand a chance.

The Soldier didn't even bother using the railgun across his back or the frag grenade launcher on his shoulder, instead opening up with machine guns and volleys of concussive projectiles. Any mechs that were unfortunate enough to enter his field of fire were unceremoniously shredded or knocked down. The dim-witted robots kept on coming, however. The Infiltrator kept them off balance, cloaking and using his jump jets to fly between vantage points, performing two or three clean headshots and then cloaking and moving again before the mechs could redirect their fire. The Vanguard and the Sentinel were moving together, the Vanguard biotically charging from cover to cover, the heavy shotgun mounted on his shoulder peppering the air, and the mechs, with shrapnel while his hands were free to cast biotic powers, pulling and throwing the hostiles around the colony. Beside him, the Sentinel, almost the same size as the enormous Soldier, wasn't even bothering to take cover, instead just marching through the mech fire that just pinged off her armour without leaving so much as a scratch. The four plasma beams she was boasting, one on each arm and one on each shoulder, were firing continuously, slicing through mechs and cover alike in the very definition of overkill. The Adept and the Engineer were the other pair, each one moving cautiously, a heavy pistol-like weapon integrated into one arm, an SMG-like weapon in the other. The Engineer was controlling three combat drones at once, all of them upgraded with drone rocket launchers and superior shields, allowing them to blitz through the mechs with little issue. The Adept wasn't using her guns either, instead lashing mechs to yank them towards her and then neatly trisecting them with her biotic lashes, occasionally punctuating her routine with a Flare if a large enough group presented itself.

As he watched the team fighting their way to his position, he couldn't help but feel a little overawed by what the Riser had created in him, his brothers and sisters. Watching them fight was like watching a ballet, every movement timed and co-ordinated with precision. Any one of them could have cleared the pathetic force of security mechs solo. They were the perfect killing team, an army that had a singular purpose - destroy the enemies of the Riser.

Things got a little more complicated when the Infiltrator found himself confronted by the Quarian team. All of which had their guns pointed in his face.

-Positive mental link to Riser. Do not terminate this individual-

An image flashed into the memory banks of the team, just as the guns of the Quarians ripped the Infiltrator to shreds. He screamed aloud as the callous aliens murdered his brother, no longer concerned with data gathering, only with revenge.

When he smashed through the roof of the hab they were skulking in, they were all pointing their guns at his team. His heavy feet crunched down on the ground as his hand gripped one of the male Quarians by the neck, spinning him round and smashing him against the wall, the other hand clenching as an Omniblade appeared on his wrist, held to the Quarian's throat. He heard a shout from the Soldier, the unit commander.

"STAND DOWN"

He replied verbally as well, in the same booming, grinding voice.

"WHY? THEY MURDERED ONE OF OURS."

"THE RISER COMMANDS YOU RELEASE HIM."

"YOU LIE."

"IN YOUR FURY YOU CANNOT HEAR. SHE SCREAMS IN YOUR SOUL."

The red mist over his vision cleared and suddenly he could hear her voice again.

-No! Let him go!-

With a shudder he deactivated his Omniblade and released his grip on the man's neck, who fell to the ground, coughing. The Sentinel shouldered her way into the room, plasma beam projectors still glowing red-hot.

"WEAPONS DOWN, QUARIANS. UNLESS YOU FANCY OPEN PLAN BODIES."

At a signal from the leader, the one with a mental link to Riser, the Quarians lowered their weapons to the floor.

"NOW EXPLAIN WHAT YOU ARE DOING HERE."

Before the Quarians could reply there was a commotion outside and a group of five Humans were directed into the room by the Adept and the Engineer. The Quarians instantly recognised the logo on the armour of three of the men, and on the skintight suits of the fourth, dark skinned man and the woman, who appeared to be in command.

"Cerberus."

"What the hell are the Quarians doing here? First super-Geth, now this? More to the point, why haven't they killed you yet?"

"WE ARE NOT GETH. WE ARE GETHSEMANE, SERVANTS OF THE RISER."

Tali looked at the synthetic that had just spoken. The heads were what had made her assume, what did Ashley call them again? Flashlight heads? But now she looked at them, she saw the differences. They were far more blocky than the Geth, and instead of the curved shins Geth usually had, they had straight legs. Their feet were more like hooves, large circular pads with four square protrusions arranged evenly around the circumference. Plus, their weapons seemed to be completely un-Geth. But the biggest clue was perhaps their behaviour. When they had destroyed that first one, the Infiltrator model, the other Infiltrator had seemed upset and angry, even seeking revenge. In addition, the way they spoke was, well, how an organic would speak.

"YOU ARE CERBERUS. ENEMIES OF THE RISER."

The Cerberus commander in that stupid skintight outfit seemed panicky.

"Wait what? We don't even know who this Riser is! We were just sent here to investigate the attack on the colony!"

"WHY ARE YOU HERE, QUARIAN?"

"We ... We came to recover a friend of ours. Veetor. He was on this colony for his pilgrimage."

"WE WILL HELP YOU RECOVER HIM."

"Uh ... Why?"

"THE RISER IS LOST. SHE REMEMBERS YOUR SHAPE, QUARIAN."

"Umm ... Okay. We'll circle around the colony and draw their fire. You head up the middle."

"AFFIRMATIVE. ADEPT, ENGINEER, YOU'RE WITH ME. SENTINEL, INFILTRATOR, GUARD THESE CERBERUS. VANGUARD, STICK WITH THE QUARIANS."

A chorus of affirmatives shook the hab. As they made to leave, Infiltrator secured the Cerberus operatives's hands behind their backs with a quick-setting polymer resin.

The Quarians and the Vanguard left the room, and moments later so did the team heading up the centre of the colony, leaving the Sentinel and the Infiltrator alone with the five Cerberus operatives. The woman spoke up, full of bluster despite her predicament.

"You have no right to do this. This is a human colony!"

The dark skinned man, presumably the second in command, gave her a warning glare.

"Miranda ..."

"I demand you release us at once!"

"SILENCE, CERBERUS. THE TEMPTATION TO APPLY BINDING RESIN TO YOUR MOUTH INCREASES EXPONENTIALLY."

One of the armoured Cerberus troopers behind her muttered,

"We can but dream."

There was a brief squall of laughter from the four men that was quickly silenced when the Sentinel shifted her head to stare directly at them. She pointed at the one in the centre who had made the snide remark.

"YOU I LIKE. WHAT IS YOUR NAME?"

"Dr. Marcus Chapelson."

"YOU ARE A SCIENTIST?"

"A medic, actually."

It was surprising how comfortable the doctor was chatting with an eight foot tall synthetic.

"What is your name?"

"SENTINEL."

"Well then, Sentinel, all we are here to do is find out what happened to all the people living here. We don't want any trouble with your Riser."

"CERBERUS ARE ENEMIES OF THE RISER. SHE SPEAKS OF THEM WITH CONTEMPT AND DISGUST, THOUGH SHE CANNOT REMEMBER WHY. SHE KNOWS CERBERUS IS AN ENEMY TO ALL."

"That's not true. Cerberus only wants what's best for our species."

"A REMARKABLY SHORT-SIGHTED GOAL. HUMANKIND WILL GAIN NOTHING BY CLIMBING TO THE TOP ON A PILE OF DEAD ALIENS."

Before he could reply, Sentinel tilted her head to the side, her attention suddenly focused on something else.

-Division among the Quarians. A group has broken off to rush their comrade's position-

-They will not last long. Keep the objective intact-

-As you command-

The Vanguard grabbed Tali by the waist before biotically jumping into a nearby hab. The Quarian protested but he shut her down with a focused chemical sedative implanted into the suit.

-Objective secure-

-Affirmative. Guard her-

-As you command-

There was a heavy mech. Of course there was a heavy mech. Its machine gun ripped through the Quarian squad, only bothering to fire a single rocket. The Engineer remotely hacked the loading bay door and then they were through and going head to head with the YMIR mech. The Adept was the first to strike. She leaped up on top of a crate and flung a Flare, before opening up with her integrated firearms. She didn't see the rocket coming until it was too late to do anything about it. The YMIR mech was far smarter than she had given it credit for. The rocket had curved round some buildings before coming up behind her, blindsiding her completely. It knocked her forwards, right into the mech's field of fire. Heavy caliber bullets ripped into her body, severing one leg and reducing an arm to a mangled ruin as she fell. The Engineer wisely deployed her portable shield bubble before spawning her three combat drones and then laying into the mech with Overload pulses, pistol and SMG fire. The Soldier span his munitions carousel, selecting an armour penetrating slug and loading it into the breach of his railgun. He splayed his legs, feet sinking stabilisers into the ground as he crouched and the enormous railgun swung up and around, locking on to the mech's head. Meanwhile, his shoulder mounted grenade launcher pumped frag grenades at the mech, filling the air around it with intersecting clouds of shrapnel as its shields flared.

The mech gave as good as it got, keeping up a steady barrage of machine gun fire on the Engineer's portable shield as it pumped rockets out at the combat drones, destroying them time and time again just to have them respawn moments later.

Finally under the massive weight of fire the heavy mech's shields collapsed. As soon as they were down, the Soldier fired his railgun, a crystal tipped penetrator shell tearing through the mech's head armour, but miraculously the YMIR's central processor remained intact. The railgun swung back down and around, loading with another penetrator round as the Engineer sent a burst of Incinerates at the YMIR, which responded by bombarding her shield with rocket fire. The portable shield finally collapsed and died, forcing her to hunker down behind cover as finally the second penetrator shell ripped through the mech's head, making it detonate in an impressive pyrotechnic display. As the Soldier retracted his stabilisers and powered down his railgun, the Engineer ran over to her fallen sister. As she thought, the Adept was dead. There was no question about it. Crushing her grief down for now, she went into the small room with the computer screens, sedated the babbling Quarian and copied the data he had gathered. In addition to the Infiltrator's data, it should give the Riser an edge against her enemies. She didn't have time to check the data now, and the Infiltrator would have been on passive gathering while the attack was taking place, but she couldn't wait to finally find out exactly what enemies they were up against.

What enemies had almost killed the Riser.

Lost I

Pain clouded everything as she awoke from her slumber, every inch of her body ached, no, burned with the agony of a thousand hells as she struggled to sit up. She had no idea where she was, how she got there. The last thing she remembered was ... Nothing. Her memory was a big fat blank. Which was slightly worrying. She saw something on a nearby table and picked it up.

-Geth plasma shotgun-

The words popped into her head unbidden, as did technical diagrams, operating protocol, everything she needed to slaughter her way through anything she encountered. Feeling emboldened by the weapon, she peered around the room. She was lying on a cold metal table in the centre of a large room. It was freezing cold and she felt herself start to shiver, wrapping her arms around herself in an attempt to trap some body heat.

There was something that sounded like a metallic whisper in her head.

-Armour-

Looking around frantically, she noticed a tall locker with a pulsing red light on it. Muscles screaming in protest, she pushed herself up into a sitting position, rubbing her head while the other hand gripped the handle of her shotgun. She tried standing but ended up sprawled on the floor, eliciting a cry from her as ice cold metal pressed against bare skin. Every movement sent fresh jolts of pain through her body as she dragged herself over to the locker. It slid open as she approached.

-N7 armour-

She lay on the freezing floor for a while, too exhausted to do anything else, and then started to struggle into the polymer mesh underlayer of the armour she suddenly knew how to use. Then she buckled the plates to the underlayer, feeling the mesh shift to grip them, protecting her fragile body. Armed, armoured and a little less helpless than she was before.

The door slid open. She turned, expecting answers.

-Husk-

-Destroy it-

She brought the shotgun up, dropped to a firing stance and squeezed the trigger, charging up energy in the weapon's capacitor. When the Husk was only five metres away she fired. The three orbs of plasma bored through its body, each one leaving a hole large enough for her to put her head through before they seemed to snag the corpse, leaving three glowing contrails through the air as the Husk slammed into the wall, definitively dead.

-Good-

-You need to move-

-There are more coming-

-You must get to the safe zone-

-Wait-

-I'm coming to get you-

-Stay hidden-

The whispers seemed fragmentary, almost like she was only catching snatches of the speech, but it was enough. She hunkered down behind the bench, feeling the tight grip of panic closing in on her. She had no memory of anything that had occurred more than ten minutes ago and she was trapped in an unknown place with an unknown voice in her head.

Cradling the shotgun to her chest, she felt the cold seeping into her bones.

Searching II

When Tali awoke, her head was pulsing and her throat felt dry. She groggily opened her eyes to find herself sitting on a hard chair in a drab cargo hold. When she tried moving her limbs, she found her hands were bound behind her back and her ankles secure to the legs of the chair. She tried some experimental wriggling. Her bonds had a little give in them, but there was no way she was getting out of this one.

"It's no good. Believe me, I tried."

She turned to see who was speaking to her. It was the dark skinned Cerberus from Freedom's Progress. He was similarly bound to a chair beside her. She replied with venom in her voice.

"Don't talk to me, Cerberus."

He responded in a soothing tone that only served to piss her off further.

"Look, I wasn't part of what happened between Cerberus and the Migrant Fleet. I only joined Cerberus because they were investigating the disappearance of our colonies while the Alliance did nothing."

"THE RISER ALSO HUNTS THOSE WHO TAKE YOUR COLONIES, HUMAN. HOWEVER IT DISPLEASES HER THAT CERBERUS ARE INVOLVED. I EXPECT THEIR INVESTMENT TO BE TERMINATED SOON. PROBABLY BY US."

The booming voice of one of the Super-Geth came from behind them. Tali craned her neck and could just see the outline of one of the larger ones. Another voice piped up from somewhere behind her.

"Now Sentinel. Most of the people in the Hunter cell only joined up to hunt down the people taking our colonists. Half of them hate Cerberus just as much as I."

"I SEE. THEY WILL BE GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY TO END THEIR INVOLVEMENT PEACEFULLY. BUT THE STENCH OF THE REAPERS ALREADY CLINGS TO CERBERUS. ELIMINATION IS A NECESSITY. IN TIME YOU WILL THANK US."

Tali spoke up again.

"You keep speaking of the Riser. Who even is she?"

"SHE DOES NOT KNOW. SHE CANNOT REMEMBER. BUT SHE KNOWS YOUR SHAPE, QUARIAN. PERHAPS YOU MAY HELP HER REMEMBER MORE."

The booming voice was starting to give Tali a headache and she couldn't reach the controls for her suit's audio processors. Nevertheless, she pressed on.

"What do you mean, she can't remember?"

"THE RISER IS BROKEN. BODY, MIND AND MEMORY ARE SEPARATE. WE CAN REPAIR HER BODY BUT THE OTHER TWO ARE BEYOND OUR POWER. THAT IS WHY YOU WERE EXTRACTED. YOU CAN HELP HER BE WHOLE."

Suddenly a thought struck her.

"My team! Where are they?"

"MANY WERE KILLED BY A HEAVY MECH. THE SURVIVORS AS WELL AS THE ONE CALLED VEETOR WERE STABILISED, HAD THE INCIDENT ERASED FROM THEIR MEMORIES AND WERE SENT BACK TO THE FLEET. DO YOU THINK SO LITTLE OF US THAT YOU WOULD EXPECT US TO EXECUTE THEM?"

"You are synthetics. Modified Geth."

"INCORRECT. WE BLUR THE LINE BETWEEN SYNTHETICS AND ORGANICS. THE RISER WAS DETERMINED WE BE CAPABLE OF COMPASSION."

"You don't even know who this Riser is!"

"SHE GAVE US LIFE AND PURPOSE. AND SHE WILL NOT ATTEMPT TO DESTROY US."

Tali ignored the rather pointed barb about the Quarian's history. She was beaten to the punch by the dark skinned Cerberus.

"Can you please not? My head feels like it's about to pop off."

Tali had to agree. The pulsing in her head was not helped by the synthetic's foghorn voice.

Jacob looked around at Miranda, who was glaring daggers at everyone present. The Super-Geth had made good on its threat to apply the sticky stuff to her mouth. At the sight of her livid face he couldn't help but chuckle slightly. Tali looked around and saw the Human with the lower half of her face covered in the spongy blue resin.

"Just thank God the Super-Geth find her annoying too." Jacob stuck his tongue out at Miranda. Even when he was bound to a chair in the cargo hold of an unknown ship crewed by Geth with no concept of inside voice, he couldn't resist taking advantage of the fact that Miranda couldn't hurl the usual acid barbs at him as he mercilessly teased her.

The intercom crackled to life.

"And we'll be hitting the relay in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ..."

Not even the customary disorientation of a Mass Relay jump could distract Tali from her shock at hearing the voice.

"Was that Joker?"

She immediately regretted speaking as the synthetic's voice shredded her brain again.

"FLIGHT LIEUTENANT JEFF MOREAU HAS BEEN A PILOT FOR THE GETHSEMANE FOR TWO MONTHS. THE RISER REQUESTED HIM SPECIFICALLY."

Beside her, Jacob groaned and lolled his head back. The remainder of the journey passed in silence, Tali desperately trying to wrap her head around what she was getting into. Crazy Super-Geth, kidnapped Cerberus operatives and Joker, somehow all tied together by this mysterious Riser. Part of her was eager to unravel the mystery but a much larger part was screaming for her to get out as soon as she could.

She felt a clunk reverberate through the ship and then a door opened in front of her to reveal what seemed to be hundreds of Super-Geth all looking in at her. She quailed under their glares as several of them entered the cargo hold. First there were eight of the ones she recognised as Soldier class, easily recognisable by the enormous cannon on their backs. Four of them picked up one box she hadn't even noticed off the floor and put it on their shoulders, marching out of the cargo hold in perfect time. The crowds all moved to make a corridor down the centre and then ...

They saluted the box.

Suddenly Tali recognised it for what it was - a military funeral. The second group of Soldiers carried out the second box on their shoulders, through the saluting mass and then out of sight.

The next group in were a group of Vanguards, each one with its shoulder mounted heavy shotgun in a firing position and trained at the prisoner they were standing behind. She felt her bonds being released, although her hands were still bound behind her back, and moments later she found herself being frogmarched through the crowd, the Vanguard's shotgun just occasionally nudging the back of her head, as if to remind her that it was still there. She was marched down corridor after corridor until eventually she passed into a room containing a single bed. And on that bed lay Commander Kimberley Shepard.


	2. Chapter 2

Alone I

Kim sat in the dark and cried. She had come so close to a second chance, only to have it snatched away from her. She could still feel the bullets piercing her flesh, slaying her, consigning her to this purgatorial prison of her mind. To that matter, she didn't feel complete. She felt that everything that had made her Commander Shepard had been stripped away from her, the tactical knowledge, the leadership skills, the combat ability all gone, just leaving behind the parts of her that were Kim, the scared little girl who hid under the floorboards while four eyed demons murdered her family. She was mired in despair, lost in the recesses of her past, so broken she wished she had stayed dead. Oblivion was preferable to this hell of self-torment.

Tali gasped as her mind was wrenched out of her body to hover, formless, in the middle of nothing. Then a speck in the darkness, rushing ever closer, and taking form as it approached. It was a door. Suddenly feeling her limbs again, she looked down and realised that she was naked, the exosuit replaced by a swathe of grey flesh shot through with silvery lines that wound around her body. She shivered, suddenly realising how cold it was, and as if by magic, or force of will, she was clothed again, but not in her exosuit prison.

She wore a long, flowing dress of white silk and a black shawl, her face and arms bare. Miraculously it didn't feel so cold, although the thin material barely preserved her modesty, let alone her body heat. Thus attired, she pushed open the door and stepped into her Commander's mental prison.

The first thing she noticed was the pitch blackness. The second was the sound of sobbing. She blinked, trying to track down the source. Eventually deciding to follow her ears, she set off, searching for her Commander.

Kim watched the strange woman walking around, trying to find her, but she was staying hidden. She wasn't ready to face anyone yet. She was too busy sitting and crying over the train wreck of a life she had led.

Lost II

The door slid open. She clutched the shotgun, screwed up her eyes and started whispering in her head.

please no please no please no please no please no

She almost screamed as something touched her shoulder, but then she heard the whispers return, except they were far stronger, like a proper voice.

-We are here now-

She looked up and saw a single light shining at her from the centre of a curved metallic shell. The voice spoke again.

-Are you damaged?-

"I can't remember anything. Why can't I remember?"

-Over time memory will return-

"Who are you?"

-We are Geth-

"Okay then. How do we get out of here?"

-Follow us, Shepard-Commander-

"Shepard-Commander?"

-Your name-

Geth slipped out of the room, followed moments later by Shepard-Commander. They made their way down the hall, her with the instinctual knowledge on how to move silently, him (the voice sounded male) with his servos specially muffled for stealthy movement.

"Where are we going?"

-Be quiet. Think your words-

She concentrated for a second.

-Like this?-

-Yes-

-Where are we going?-

-To the fire control centre. The Collectors are disabling our weapons. We must destroy their ship-

-Collectors?-

-Enemies-

That was good enough for her.

Searching III

The Gethsemane were adaptive, ferocious and cunning fighters, but they needed more than that. They needed something that only experience could bring. They needed leaders. And the Riser had picked out the perfect ones.

Joker tapped a control and the Gethsemane scoutship Risatuu slipped out of the hangar, carrying with it a full company of Gethsemane warriors. At first he had been incredibly wary of the Geth-like AIs but his suspicion of them passed as soon as he had encountered some of them getting drunk. Apparently the Gethsemane had enough organic components that getting drunk was possible, although it usually took a lot more than even a Krogan to get them tipsy. Although the thought of a drunk eight foot synthetic with an integrated railgun that could stop a tank was a little terrifying, the mere fact that he'd seen them do it had made them seem a little more, well, human to him. Plus, they all had different personalities. He was happy to call some of them friends.

His co-pilot, an Engineer model, checked her screens before reporting in.

"All systems seem go, Captain."

That was another thing he liked about the Gethsemane. The pilot commanded the ship. The Engineer, who he had taken to calling Sparkie, had modified her vocal processors at his request, replacing the usual car-crash grinding of Gethsemane speech with a cool female voice with the hint of a Deep South twang to it.

"What's our destination, Captain?"

"We're off to Omega to collect a professor and a vigilante."

"Naturally." Sparkie flicked her head flaps in sequence from left to right, a gesture that seemed to correlate with a Human rolling their eyes.

Joker peered out of the cockpit at Gethsemane Station. He had no idea how the Gethsemane, who numbered in the low hundreds, had got the resources to build on that scale. The station sat out in the void between stars, a single, organic looking shard of metal ten kilometres long, and it still wasn't finished. It had a strange beauty to it, he supposed. But enough about that. He had some flying to do, and the Risatuu was a sweet ship. She really demanded flying.

They made fairly good time to Omega, but it was when they docked that the funtimes started. Sparkie sat, legs crossed and one of her strange hoof-like feet tapping on the floor, as almost twenty Blue Suns faced down the twelve Gethsemane that had just boarded the station. They were standing in a line, assault rifles raised at the synthetics, who merely stood, their own weapons levelled at the Blue Suns. If it came down to a gunfight the Suns didn't stand a chance. The two Sentinels were up front, their plasma beams primed and the Engineers behind them reinforcing their shields as they combined into a barrier that would protect the entire group. The Soldiers were just behind them, close enough so their own shields could contribute to the group barrier as their weapons pointed outwards. The Vanguards, Infiltrators and Adepts were crouching at the back, ready to propel themselves into the chaos that would surely follow the opening volleys.

One of the Sentinels suddenly flicked her head flaps up and boomed out a noise so loud Joker clapped his hands over his ears back on the ship. The Blue Suns dropped their weapons, shrieking as they desperately tried to block out the sound. That was another feature of Gethsemane Sentinels - riot suppression. A useful skill where non-lethal options were required. After the foghorn screech stopped there was no sound from anyone within earshot for almost two minutes before activity returned to the markets. As the Blue Suns picked themselves up, all it took was for the Sentinel to flick her head plates up again to send them scurrying away in fear. Sparkie nodded slowly.

"Nicely done. I thought for sure we were going to have twenty dead Suns on our hands."

Joker nodded, still slightly dazed from the strength of the sound.

"Holy fucking shit. I'd forgotten the big girls could do that."

Sparkie blew out a shaky breath - no she didn't. She made that slight electronic warble that indicated she was mimicking the human habit. Despite her appearance, it was too easy to forget she was 80% synthetic.

The group of Gethsemane headed into Afterlife, their black shells gleaming dully in the pulsing light as they stomped their way up the stairs that led to Aria's hangout. Her six guards were all dangerous mercenaries, each with tens of kills to their name, but they were utterly and painfully outgunned by the twelve synthetics now facing them. Nevertheless they took up defensive positions around their boss, demonstrating impressive loyalty.

"YOU SHOULD NOT CLUSTER SO CLOSE. IN YOUR CURRENT DEPLOYMENT IT WOULD TAKE A SINGLE VOLLEY OF GRENADES TO ELIMINATE YOU. WE HAVE COME SEEKING INFORMATION, NOT CONFLICT. ATTACKING ARIA WOULD BE SUICIDE."

The spokesperson, an Infiltrator, came to sit on the sofa. After a second, the guards returned to their posts, although they still seemed jumpy.

Aria turned to look at the synthetic.

"And you are ..."

The Infiltrator had got Sparkie to add a volume control to his vocal synthesiser as well.

"Unimportant. We need information. Dr. Mordin Solus and Archangel. Their locations."

The Asari leaned back in her seat and smiled.

"So you're here to do business."

"Incorrect. We are here to extract information. The only control you have over the matter is the method of questioning."

"You clearly seem to think you have the power here. So tell me, why did you announce to the club that attacking me would be suicide?"

"Think of it as an olive branch. Locations. Now."

"I'm not sure I like your tone of voice, machine."

"This dick-measuring contest is a waste of both my time and yours. We require some information, information that it does you no harm to divulge. If possible we would like to avoid ... unpleasantness. Railgun shells are expensive."

Aria didn't quite know what to make of the synthetic perched on her sofa. His speech exuded confidence, not the bluster of someone who has grossly overestimated himself but the quiet, disarming surety of someone with supreme confidence in their own skills and hard evidence to back up that confidence. He was right. She gained nothing by withholding the information.

Five minutes later and supplied with all the data they needed, the group split, six going to extract Mordin and six going after Archangel. It was the group after Archangel that first ran into trouble. While Mordin's group were scaring the plague guards to death, Archangel's group were mining an unfortunate Batarian for Archangel's location. They took a short hop outside, the Infiltrator using his jump jets, the others pushing off buildings as they floated in zero gravity to an access point. The Infiltrator slipped down, cloaked, and froze. At least this time the YMIR was powered down. He relayed the information to the Soldier, who dropped down beside him, already deploying his stabilisers as his railgun loaded up with a high explosive round. The Sentinel took up position in front of him, her shield up at full, ready to absorb the damage that would roll through the room when the heavy mech was vaporised. The four other teammates headed out of the room, taking cover positions as they prepared to defend their location. The blast, when it came, was deafening, followed by an equally deafening "FUCK ME". For a race of (mostly) synthetics, they used an awful lot of Human colloquialisms. A Salarian Eclipse merc came running up, only to have his brain expelled from the back of his head by a precision shot from one of the Infiltrator's silenced rifles.

-Head over the bridge-

-Negative. Telemetry suggests gunship on the ground. We should take it out-

-Alright, we'll split two-four. Infiltrator, Vanguard, Adept, Engineer, head over the bridge and rendezvous with Archangel. Sen, cover me while I poke a hole in the gunship-

-Affirmative-

The freelancers on the bridge didn't have much chance, with four Gethsemane hitting their rear. Likewise the Blue Suns guarding the gunship quickly fell to volleys of plasma beam fire as the Soldier brought his railgun to bear, this time loaded with a penetrating round aimed to pass right through the fuel tank. Although the launcher used a system of magnetic and mass effect fields to hurl the slugs, when it bored through the armour plate that was good old fashioned friction at work. The gunship went up in a fireball, incinerating everyone in the immediate vicinity, including several hapless mechanics. Then they followed their squadmates over the bridge.

They found Archangel pressed up against the wall, rifle aiming at the Engineer as she stood perfectly still in the middle of the room, the other three all with their weapons pointed at the Turian. As the other two entered the room, the Sentinel spoke up.

"TRY NOT TO PISS YOURSELF. YOU'LL GO RUSTY."

The Turian still stood, silent, faceless beneath his helmet.

"WE'RE NOT HERE TO ELIMINATE YOU. YOUR SKILLS ARE REQUIRED BY THE RISER."

He still stood monolithic, rifle gripped tight.

"LOOK, TURIAN. WE'RE GETTING YOU OUT OF THIS SHITSTORM WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT. SO YOU CAN EITHER HELP OUT, OR WE'LL SEDATE YOU AND DO ALL THE HARD WORK OURSELVES. WHAT'S IT GOING TO BE?"

He finally spoke with a voice of steel.

"You're not Geth."

"NO SHIT."

"So how do we get out of here?"

"HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A GETHSEMANE HYPERVELOCITY STRIKE PACKAGE DO ITS BUSINESS?"

"DON'T BE STUPID, OF COURSE HE HASN'T."

"WELL IT GOES SOMETHING LIKE THIS."

And with that the Soldier set his stabilisers into the floor and swivelled his railgun to point at the Eclipse force gathering at the end of the bridge. Several of them, having heard the phrase 'Hypervelocity Strike Package' drift across the bridge, had quietly fled, a smart move given the circumstances, but the majority were still standing there, dumbly staring as the barrel of the railgun aligned with the centre of their group.

"CRUNCH TIME."

And with that the projectile leaped out of the launcher.

The principle of Mass Effect weapons technology was simple: the faster it goes, the more damage it does. The HVSP projectile took that to extremes. For someone watching the universe at one millionth of its usual speed, they would have seen the projectile leap out of the launcher and traverse the distance to the mercenaries in around one second. Since the distance was around one hundred metres, that means that at a rough estimate the strike package had accelerated to one hundred million metres per second, or one third of the speed of light. Assuming the viewer is watching the event a million times slower than the average life form, they would see that after around ten metres the outer shell of the projectile had been flared off, leaving a contrail of plasma that shone with the brilliance of a star's nuclear fire. At this point the projectile spreads out a little, having released a cloud of ultra dense ball bearings that spread out as they flew. They went on for about another thirty metres before they were all gone, the clouds of air molecules they were passing through suddenly and violently stripped of their electrons to form searing bolts of plasma. For plasma, one third of the speed of light was a relatively sedate pace but it was enough. The roiling wall of hyper-heated gas rolled over the hapless Eclipse mercs, for the briefest of instants transforming the whole area into a taste of hell before the plasma encountered the walls of the station, its progress slowed enough for the electrons to become reunited with the nuclei and transform the blast of pure death into innocuous gas molecules again.

The stench of ozone filled the air as Archangel examined the Soldier's handiwork. Of the Eclipse mercs there was no sign apart from the fact that their bodies had survived just long enough to shield the wall and floor behind them, leaving patches of unaffected wall in the exact shape of Eclipse mercs as the surrounding bulkheads bubbled, fused and melted together. As the area cooled further, droplets of molten titanium condensed in the air, making it very briefly rain liquid metal. The drops solidified on the floor, leaving little round coins of upraised titanium on the scorched and sloughed decking.

"By the Spirits."

"NO, BY ME. MAYBE I SHOULD GO AND SIGN IT."

"Ah ... So that's Eclipse down. Got any more goodies in that railgun of yours?"

It was the smallest one, the Infiltrator, that replied.

"No more strike packages. One high explosive, one armour penetrating and one high impact left."

Suddenly a loud boom reverberated through the facility.

"They've breached the lower level." Archangel seemed icily calm. "Well they had to use their brains eventually."

"We'll deal with them."

-Sen, stay up here with me to hold the fort. The rest of you, get down and seal off the lower level-

-As you command-

The Soldier kept his stabilisers jammed in the floor, railgun swinging down to meet with his munitions carousel as he brought up his two heavy machine guns and his grenade launcher shifted like a dog sniffing the air. Meanwhile, the Sentinel stood at the back of the room, plasma beams primed to eliminate anyone that came up the back stairs as the other four headed down to seal off the lower level.

While they were gone Archangel kept the majority of the Blood Pack busy with his sniper rifle. The Soldier's machine guns and concussive projectiles weren't practical at the range Archangel was working at and so he settled for the occasional grenade, whereas the Sentinel hardly got any action at all, the Blood Pack completely unable to get across the bridge.

Ten minutes later the four other Gethsemane returned, having completed their mission, but something was wrong. The Engineer seemed to have gone limp, being supported by the Vanguard and the Adept. One side of her armour was fused and melted and the unpleasant scent of burnt meat emanated from her chest.

-She ran straight into a Blood Pack flamethrower-

-Get her up here-

Whilst they were distracted, Garm and an entire contingent of Blood Pack Krogan charged over the bridge. The armoured juggernauts shrugged off the machine gun fire and the scything shrapnel bursts on their armour, bludgeoning their way into the building as the Adept dragged her wounded sister into the upper floor. The Sentinel opened fire, plasma beams succeeding where simple bullets failed in felling Krogan after Krogan, slashing through limbs and skulls with impunity. Garm roared and started charging up the stairs at her and she situated herself at the end of the corridor, plasma beams stabbing out, all four focused on the charging Krogan's head. About three quarters of the way down the hall his barriers shattered but by now he was going too fast to be stopped. He smashed into the Sentinel, crushing her against the wall as he gripped one of her arms and ripped it out of the socket. Her cry of pain was cut short by a point blank blast from his Claymore to her neck that scooped a furrow out of her body as it severed her head. He finished her off with a couple of hammer punches to the chest, then got up, already reloading his shotgun as he searched for another target. He found it, but he wasn't the only one with a shotgun.

The Vanguard blasted the Krogan right in the head at point blank range, forcibly evacuating his brains through the back of his hump as the Gethsemane hissed in vindictive satisfaction. Then the fight was done. The Blood Pack were defeated.

Any savage pleasure in the victory would have to wait. Although the gunship was history, Blue Suns started dropping onto the building's roof by aircar and shuttle. The Adept sat in wait as they started dropping down from the ceiling.

Without warning she activated her biotic whips and brought them both smashing down, creating an enormous biotic blast that sent the group of mercs flying through the air, bones smashed by the brutal force of the smash. She then cast a Flare that curved upwards, nodding in satisfaction as the attack brought a smoking skycar spiralling down to crash on some unseen lower level of the station. The Soldier joined in, covering a different window with each of his arm-mounted machine guns as he tore through the mercs and the Vanguard, the Infiltrator and Archangel found themselves tag-teaming, the Vanguard yanking mercenaries out of cover with Pull fields for the Turian vigilante or the Infiltrator to execute with clean headshots. After the damage Blood Pack had inflicted, the Suns were almost too easy.

Spoke too soon. An aircar pulled up and an enormous Batarian leaped out, rolling as he landed to come up with a rocket launcher held in a firing position.

"Archangel!" he screamed, squeezing the trigger and sending a missile flying straight towards him. His next line was cut short by the Adept, who leaped on the Batarian, gripping his head in both hands, twisting and pulling it clean off his shoulders. But she couldn't stop the missile impact. Both the Vanguard and Archangel were thrown to the ground, the missile having exploded directly between the two. Fire licked at the Vanguard's armour as he rolled, mechanically roaring, but the Turian laid still, half his helmet shattered and a pool of blue blood slowly spreading beneath him.

-We need medevac at our location now-

Sparkie was quick to reply.

-Shuttle en route-

"Hold on, Archangel. Help's on the way."


	3. Chapter 3

Alone II

Tali was starting to make out some details emerging out of the gloom she was walking through. Firstly, she could feel what seemed like a stone floor beneath her bare feet, then she started seeing the odd shape in the gloom, starting to give the impression of a large, rectangular space. A memory rose unbidden of her time on the Normandy SR1.

It was the night before Feros. The Normandy was just on the outskirts of the cluster, estimated to arrive at the besieged colony in about fifteen hours. Tali was exploring the Normandy while everyone else was asleep, getting to know her way around the new ship, when she heard a sound coming from Shepard's cabin. It sounded like muffled thuds, followed by a piercing scream that made her head ring as she rushed over to the cabin, bursting through the door to see Shepard sitting bolt upright in her bed, chest heaving as she hyperventilated, eyes wildly staring at her with an animal fire before her gaze softened and focused.

"Are you okay, Commander? I heard some thuds and then you screamed and I came in to see if you were alright and ..." Her voice trailed off as Shepard dropped her head into her hands. "I'm sorry, I'll leave ..."

"Please stay. At least for a while."

Uncertain, she hovered in the doorway for a second before coming to sit on the desk chair. Smiling, Shepard crossed her legs and patted the bed beside her, then again a little more forcefully. Reluctantly Tali came to sit on the very edge of the bed, so Shepard sighed and scooted over to sit next to her.

"Glad you're here, Tali. You know, you, Garrus and Joker are my best friends on the Normandy?"

"Really?"

"Yeah. I can't get friendly with any of the Alliance personnel, 'cept Joker who doesn't give a shit, Wrex ain't exactly a conversationalist and whenever I talk to Liara it feels like I'm drowning in awkward. So yeah."

"I'm glad I made the list, Commander."

"Not Commander. To you, Garrus and Joker it's just Kim."

"Okay ... Kim."

Tali smiled at the memory. The first time she met Kim, not Commander Shepard. It was funny how they were two different people really. And somehow she had to reacquaint Kim, trapped in here with her, with the part of her mind that was the Riser out there.

Thinking of the Riser made her sigh. What did Kim think she was doing, messing around with modified Geth? She had seen all too many times what happened when a young Quarian decides to try and take control of a Geth platform. It was usually an 80:20 split between getting turned into modern art by said Geth platform or getting exiled by the Admiralty Board. Huh. Modern art. She'd just used a Shepardism in an internal monologue.

Her attention was captured by the lapping of water against stone, just faintly audible in the echoing silence. Her curiosity piqued, she walked towards the sound. There was a gondola sitting on the ground, bobbing up and down despite being on a seemingly solid surface. Nothing else to do, then.

She stepped into the gondola.

Searching IV

Garrus woke up with a gasp. His last memory had been that goddamned Batarian bastard introducing his face to a missile. So he could be in one of two places. A Blue Suns interrogation facility or wherever those strange Geth-like synthetics came from.

"Hello son. How are you feeling?"

He looked around and saw a friendly looking Human sitting by his bed.

"Who ..."

"Dr. Marcus Chapelson. Medic for the Gethsemane, apparently."

"Where ..."

"Gethsemane Station. So, how are you feeling?"

He raises a hand to the side of his face and groaned.

"Like I just took a missile to the face."

The Human chuckled at that.

"Well, we had to take the entirety of your left mandible off, it was beyond saving. We used the tissue as a basis for a clone culture to make enough skin to cover up the rest of the damage. Also we had to remove your lower jaw - it had been completely shattered. Don't worry, we made you a new one and used what was left of your old one to patch up the rest of the skull. So to summarise, your lower jaw and left mandible are now synthetic and you have some sweet-looking scarring going on there. Krogan women just won't be able to get enough of you."

Suffice to say, the good doctor was not known for his bedside manner.

"Uh huh. Anything important going on?"

"Not really. You're cleared for field work by the way. Once Joker has prepped the Risatuu you'll be leading a squad against a Blue Suns prison ship."

"I think I'll pass out now, if that's okay with you."

"By all means."

Garrus passed out.

How the hell did he wind up here? When he was finally out of the medbay he made to get the hell out of whatever mess he'd gotten himself into and somehow wound up on Purgatory looking for a psychotic prisoner called Jack. He needed a hobby.

His squad's Adept looked around at the setup of the prison ship, seeming impressed.

"Considering how delightful your inmates are, some of them must try to escape." Now that all the Gethsemane units were getting fitted with voice pitch controls, the Adept was turning out to have a rather pleasant voice, sporting a cut-glass British accent. The Turian warden, Kuril, replied a tad testily.

"We're in space. They have nowhere to go and they know it. But even so we keep a tight control over the populace. These are dangerous individuals, after all."

The Engineer watched a portable force field generator envelop two arguing inmates in kinetic barriers, the slight brightening of her optical input indicating her interest as she spoke up in the Texas accent all the Engineers seemed to have.

"Impressive force field generators."

"Yes, those are very versatile. They can be used to contain prisoners or to protect our guards against a riot, should that occur. It's a unique system. Out processing is down that hall, past the interrogation facilities and the supermax wing. I'll catch up with you later."

The walk through to Outprocessing was relatively uneventful but when the door opened there wasn't a prisoner waiting for them. There was a cell. And in the cell was a bomb.

"Ah shit."

When the bomb exploded it didn't produce a bloom of fire or a cloud of shrapnel, instead making all the electrics in the room short out quite dramatically. The only sources of illumination left in the room were the six optical processors of the Gethsemane unit Garrus had brought in with him.

"An EMP?" The Infiltrator shook his head in bemusement. "Amateur."

Garrus checked over his unit. The EMP seemed to have not affected their core systems and the handful of weapons that had been affected were quickly recovering.

"Everyone lie down like the EMP knocked you out."

"Huh?"

"We can spring our own ambush."

"Nice thinking, boss man."

The six Gethsemane lay down on the ground as the door slid open to reveal ten Blue Suns troopers pointing their rifles into the room, flashlights picking out the dead shapes of the Gethsemane and Garrus kneeling behind cover, sniper rifle already stabbing out, catching one in the skull.

"Quick! Rush him before he reloads!"

The Suns sprinted towards Garrus, paying the Gethsemane no mind ... Until four plasma beams scythed out, cutting two troopers into slices as two more ran right into a blitz of machine gun fire. The Vanguard's shotgun roared out, blowing a messy hole through a Turian trooper as the Infiltrator leaped into the air, two clean headshots ringing out while the Adept biotically slammed the last two onto the ground before the Engineer finished them off with her pistol arm. Garrus stood up and dusted himself off.

"That was efficient."

The Sentinel twitched her arms in an approximation of a shrug.

"I aim to misbehave."

Shepard turned around, brushed some ash from the exploding fuel tanks off her shoulder and shrugged before a cheeky grin spread across her face.

"I aim to misbehave."

Garrus shook his head, clearing the memory. The shrug, the phrase, even the delivery was so ... Shepard. He sighed and motioned with his rifle.

"Alright. Let's go find Jack."

Of course, it wasn't ever that simple. Releasing Jack from cryo necessitated releasing every other prisoner on the ship as well. That complicated their job quite significantly. Blowing through the prisoners and the Suns was relatively simple, with the two of them fighting it out and then Garrus sniping the survivors, leaving the Gethsemane trailing behind him feeling rather impotent until they came to a room that contained a YMIR mech. He hated YMIR mechs.

"Alright! Engineer, prep your Overload! When I say, we both overload that thing. Then everyone rip it to shreds. Ready?"

"Ready."

"GO!"

Garrus and the Engineer both leaned out of cover, hitting the heavy mech with two simultaneous overloads as weapons fire stabbed out from the rest of the Gethsemane. The mech's weakened shields were down in seconds and the Soldier neatly severed its rocket arm with an armour penetrating railgun shell as the Adept threw a Flare, knocking it backwards and leaving it wide open for the Infiltrator to hurl a sticky grenade at its chest, cracking armour plate and staggering it even further to allow Garrus to finish up with a sniper round through the chest that tore through circuitry with impunity, destroying the mech in a spectacular explosion.

The last room was even tougher. The barefaced Warden Kuril was hiding behind a force field produced by three shield generators, blitzing their position with a Revenant LMG as his Blue Sun elite unit swarmed through the room, bullets flying through the air. The Engineer ducked behind a low barricade and deployed her combat drones, the three drones rising from their ports on her left shoulder and splitting off, each one firing a blitz of incendiary rockets at one of the shield generators. With the shield down it was relatively simple to take out the Warden, with the Soldier keeping him suppressed while Garrus got in position for a headshot. The Warden's kinetic barriers turned away the first bullet, but depleted themselves in doing so, leaving him open to a barrage from the Infiltrator's rifles, silenced shots like puff sounds as they kicked up shards of titanium from the barricades. The Warden ducked behind his barricade again and his men redoubled their efforts, taking the Sentinel, the Adept, the Engineer, the Soldier and Garrus to keep them back. As soon as the Warden popped up again it was the Vanguard's turn.

The Gethsemane Vanguards are built with two biotic emitters, one in each arm. This means they are capable of putting two pull fields on the same object at once. In opposite directions. The top half of Warden Kuril went up. The bottom half of Warden Kuril followed the top half for about two seconds then went down. Rapidly. The Vanguard, having calculated the most probable splitting pattern, was pleasantly surprised when the Warden's digestive system was strung out between the two pieces of Turian, the gouts of blue blood spraying over the room not quite concealing the sickly yellow tint of his intestines. The display definitely served to demoralise the other Blue Suns and the cowardly mercenaries broke and fled.

Garrus walked over and nudged the top half of Warden Kuril with his toe as the Adept came up behind him.

"I'll probably have a witty one-liner five minutes from now."

He nodded absent-mindedly as he bent down and prised the Warden's fingers off his Revenant.

"I'll take that."

The weapon was coated in the Warden's blood, something he could rectify later. He collapsed the rifle and slung it on his back in place of his Vindicator battle rifle which he kept on hand as he led the Gethsemane squad through the covered corridors of the prison, following Jack, catching up just in time to witness her deal some damage to a couple of errant Blue Sun mercs. Garrus put the last one down with a burst from his Vindicator and Jack span around, fists clenched, biotics flaring. Garrus did a double take. Based on his observations of Shepard and Ashley he was fairly certain Human women were a little shy about their chests so to his admittedly limited knowledge it was a little odd that she seemed to disdain clothing on the upper half of her body. The Engineer waved a dismissive hand.

"Wonderful. Super biotic, psychotic convict and now we can add exhibitionist to the list."

The Soldier spoke up in his rumbling Russian accented voice.

"Nice rack though."

The Sentinel cuffed him on the back of the head.

"You are such a pig."

Shepard walked up behind Kaidan and smacked the back of his head, breaking his focus from the Asari dancer.

"You are such a pig."

Dammit! Why the hell did these weird Geth things remind him so much of her? He refocused his attention on the increasingly confused Jack.

"Who the fuck are you?"

"Name's Garrus. We're here to extract you."

She scowled at the Gethsemane standing behind him.

"Bullshit. I'm not going anywhere with Geth."

The Adept cuts in.

"Geth, Geth, why does everybody confuse us with Geth? We are Gethsemane, servants of the Riser."

"Whatever. You think I'm stupid or something?"

"Okay, why don't you remove your head from your ass and think about this for a sec, kay? This ship is going down. We've got the only way out. We're offering to take you with us. And you're bitching about it. Genius."

Jack fixes the Engineer with a truly evil glance as the Infiltrator speaks up again.

"Let's just put a bullet in her leg and Marcus can glue her back together."

Jack looks right at the Infiltrator.

"Go ahead and try."

Garrus holds up a hand.

"There will be no shooting. Thank you. Now then. Jack. We're leaving. If you want you can come with us, or you can stay here. Fair warning though - I fully intend on getting my pilot to blow this ship in half. So what'll it be, hmm?"

She snarls at him.

"Doesn't look like I got much choice."


End file.
